India's
massive failure to provide the very basic necessities of
food, clothing and shelter for its people is legendary. Tired of waiting for the Indian democracy to deliver, over a million Indians defy the odds to gain entry into other nations to seek a better life. Many are choosing to do so
illegally. Here's an account from a blog post from
Escape From India as to why this is happening:
Any crackdown on
illegal immigrants abroad or restricting quotas to Indians are a major concern to Indias politicians. The latest statistics from US Department of Homeland Security shows that the numbers of Indian illegal migrants jumped 125% since 2000! Ever wondered why Indians migrate to another countries but no one comes to India for a living? Here are some Indian facts:
Poverty Graph
According to WFP, India accounts around 50% of the worlds hungry. (more than in the whole of Africa) and its fiscal deficit is one of the highest in the world. Indias Global Hunger Index (GHI) score is 23.7, a rank of 66th out of 88 countries. Indias rating is slightly above Bangladesh but below all other South Asian nations and listed under ALARMING category. Ref: IFPRI Country Report on India
Around six out of 10 Indians live in the countryside, where abject poverty is widespread. 34.7 % of the Indian population lives with an income below $ 1 a day and 79.9 % below $ 2 a day. According to the Indias planning commission report 26.1 % of the population live below the poverty line. [World Banks poverty line of $1 a day, but the Indian poverty line of Rs 360 a month, or 30 cents a day].
The Current Account Balance of India
A major area of vulnerability for us is the high consolidated public-debt to GDP ratio of over 70 percent
(and) consolidated fiscal deficit, says the Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Mr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy.
According to CIA world fact book, the Current account balance of India is -37,510,000,000 (minus) while China is the wealthiest country in the world with $ 426,100,000,000 (Plus) . India listed as 182 and China as no.1 [CIA: The world fact book]
Human Development vs GDP growth
The Human Development Report for 2009 released by the UNDP ranked India 134 out of 182 countries, working it out through measures of life expectancy, education and income. India has an emigration rate of 0.8%. The major continent of destination for migrants from India is Asia with 72.0% of emigrants living there. The report found that Indias GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) is $2,753, far below Malaysias $13,518. China listed as 92 with PPP of $5383. Read the statistics from UNDP website.
Population:
According to the Indian census of 2001, the total population was 1.028 billion. Hindus numbered 827 million or 80.5 %. About 25 per cent (24 million) of those Hindus are belonging to Scheduled Castes and Tribes. About 40 per cent (400 million) are Other Backward Castes.
15 per cent Hindu upper castes inherited majority of Indias civil service, economy and active politics from British colonial masters. And thus the caste system virtually leaves lower caste Hindus in to an oppressed majority in Indias power structure. Going by figures quoted by the Backward Classes Commission, Brahmins alone account for 37.17 per cent of the bureaucracy. [Who is Really Ruling India?]
The 2004 World Development Report mentions that more than 25% of Indias primary school teachers and 43% of primary health care workers are absent on any given day!
Living conditions of Indians
89 percent of rural households do not own telephones; 52 percent do not have any domestic power connection. There are daily power cuts even in the nations capital. The average brownout in India is three hours per day during non-monsoon months, 17 hours daily during the monsoon. The average village is 2 kilometers away from an all-weather road, and 20 percent of rural habitations have partial or no access to a safe drinking-water supply. [Tarun Khanna, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization]
According to the National Family Health Survey data (2005-06), only 45 per cent of households in the country had access to improved sanitation.
Education
India has over 35 per cent of the worlds total illiterate population. [UNESCO Education for All Report 2008] Only 66 per cent people are literate in India (76 per cent men and 54 per cent women)
About 40 million primary school-age children in India are not in school. More than 92 % children cannot progress beyond secondary school. According to reports, 35 per cent schools dont have infrastructure such as blackboards and furniture. And close to 90 per cent have no functional toilets. Half of Indias schools still have leaking roofs or no water supply.
Japan has 4,000 universities for its 127 million people and the US has 3,650 universities for its 301 million, India has only 348 universities for its 1.2 billion people. In the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities by Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong, only two Indian Universities are included. Even those two IITs in India found only a lower slot (203-304) in 2007 report. Although Indian universities churn out three million graduates a year, only 15% of them are suitable employees for blue-chip companies. Only 1 million among them are IT professionals.
Health
India today allocates lower than one per cent gross domestic product (GDP) to health. According to United Nations calculations, Indias spending on public health as a share of GDP is the 18th lowest in the world. 150 million Indians are blind. 2.13 per cent of the total population (21.9 million) live with disabilities in India. Yet, only 34 per cent of the disabled are employed [Census 2001] India has the single highest share of neonatal deaths in the world, 2.1 million.
107,000 Leprosy patients live in India. 15.3 % of the population do not survive to the age of forty. Serpent attacks kill as many as 50,000 Indians while the cobra occupies a hallowed place in the Hindu religion. Heart disease, strokes and diabetes cost India an estimated $9 billion in lost productivity in 2005. The losses could grow to a staggering $200 billion over the next 10 years if corrective action is not taken quickly, says a study by the New Delhi-based Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
There are only 585 rural hospitals compared to 985 urban hospitals in the country. Out of the 6,39,729 doctors registered in India, only 67,576 are in the public sector and the rest either in private sectors or abroad, pointing towards the severity of the problem. According to a survey by NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation), 40 per cent of the people hospitalised have either had to borrow money or sell assets to cover their medical expenses. Over 85 per cent of the Indian population does not have any form of health coverage.
Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in India. India accounts for one-fifth of the global TB incident cases. Each year about 1.8 million people in India develop TB, of which 0.8 million are infectious cases. It is estimated that annually around 330,000 Indians die due to TB. [WHO India]
Economy under the siege of Elite Hindus
In India, wealth of 36 families amounts to $ 191 billion, which is one-fourth of Indias GDP. In other words, 35 elite Hindu families own quarter of Indias GDP by leaving 85 % ordinary Hindus as poor!
The dominant group of Hindu nationalists come from the three upper castes ( Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas ) that constitute only 10 per cent of the total Indian population. But, they claim perhaps 80 % of the jobs in the new economy, in sectors such as software, biotechnology, and hotel management.
India is also one of the most under-banked major markets in the world with only 6 bank branches per 1,000 sq kms, according to the World Bank, and less than 31% of the population has access to a bank account. According to Indias national agency, (NABARD), around 60 per cent people are not having access to financial institutions in India. This figure is less than 15 per cent in developed countries.
Corruption
According to TI, 25 % of Indians paid bribe to obtain a service. 68 % believe that governmental efforts to stop the corruption as ineffective. More than 90 % consider police and political parties as the worst corrupt institutions. 90 % of Indians believe that corruption will increase within the next 3 years. Corruption is a large tax on Indian growth, It delays execution, raises costs and destroys the moral fiber. says Prof. Rama Murthi. Transparency International estimates that Indian truckers pay something in the neighborhood of $5 billion annually in bribes to keep freight flowing. According to Rahul Gandhi, only 5 per cent of development funds reached their intended recipients due to hierarchical corruption in the country! [Financial Times]
Discrimination against Dalits
Crime against Dalits occur every 20 minutes in India. Every day 3 Dalit women are raped, 2 Dalits are murdered and 2 Dalit houses are burnt down! These figures represent only a fraction of actual incidents since many Dalits do not register cases for fear of retaliation by the police and upper-caste Hindu individuals. Official figures show that there are still 0.343 million manual scavengers in India from Dalit community. More than 165 million Dalits in India are simply abused by their Hindu upper castes for their birth! . [HRW Report2007]
Human Rights
When it comes to Human Rights issues in India, it is not ratified the UN Convention against Torture, its citizens do not have the opportunity to find recourse in remedies that are available under international law. The victims are trapped with the local Hindu caste system, which in every aspect militates against their rights.
India has a very poor record of protecting the privacy of its citizens, according to the latest report from Privacy International (PI). India scored 1.9 points, which makes it an extensive surveillance society. A score between 4.1 and 5.0 (the highest score) would mean a country consistently upholds human rights standards. PI is a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations. [Fake encounter killings are rampant in India. This extra judicial killings are inspired by theological texts of Brahmins like Artha Shastra and Manusmriti which teaches espionage and torture methods. Every such killing of an innocent person, branded a terrorist, has encouraged the killer cops to target socially excluded communities like dalits, tribals and minorities.
According to the National Human Rights Commission, as on 30th June 2004, there were 3,32,112 prisoners in Indian jails out of which 2,39,146 were under trial prisoners. Thats more than 70 %. Indias jails hold a disproportionate number of the countrys minority Muslims, a sign of discrimination and alienation from the Hindu majority. The bar association in Indias largest state, Uttar Pradesh, has refused to represent 13 Muslim suspects accused bombing courthouses in 2005 . A large part of police officers, Indian attorneys and judges appear regularly on the events organized by notorious Hindu militant groups. Prison statistics of Indian Jails can be seen from National Crime Record Bureau, here
India is a parliamentary democracy, but rather less than a fully free society. The human rights group Freedom House ranks India as a 2 (on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 the highest) for political rights and 3 for civil liberties. Elections are generally free but, notes Freedom House, Government effectiveness and accountability are also undermined by pervasive criminality in politics, decrepit state institutions, and widespread corruption. The State Department observes: There were numerous reports that the government and its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals and insurgents, or staged encounter deaths. Read Freedom House Report from here.
Minorities
About 20 %, or 200 million, are religious minorities. Muslims constitutes 138 million or 13.4 5, Christians 24 million or 2.3 %, Sikhs 19 million or 2 %, Buddhists 8 million or 0.8 % and Jains 4 million or 0.4 %. Others numbered 6.6 million or 0.6 %. According to Mr. Tahir Mahmood, an Indian Muslim journalist, The 2.3 % Christians in the Indian population cater to 20 % of all primary education in India, 10 % of all the literacy and community health care, 25 % of all existing care of destitute and orphans, 30 % of all the handicapped, lepers and AIDS patients etc.
Discrimination against Minority Muslims
Recently, Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee report admitted that 138 Million Muslims across India are severely under-represented in government employment, including Public Sector Units. Ironically, West Bengal, a communist ruled state reported 0 (zero) percent of Muslims in higher positions in its PSUs! It has found that the share of Muslims in government jobs and in the lower judiciary in any state simply does not come anywhere close to their population share. The only place where Muslims can claim a share in proportion to their population is in prison! (Muslims convicts in India is 19.1%, while the number of under trials is 22.5%, which exceed their population ratio) . A note sent on January 9 by the army to the defence ministry in 2004 says that only 29,093 Muslims among a total of 1.1 million personnel a ratio of 2.6 %, which compares poorly with the Muslims 13.8 % share in the Indian population. Officially, Indian Army dont allow head count based on religion.
A Muslim child attends school for three years and four months, compared to the national average of four years. Less than two percent of the students at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology comprise of the Muslim community. According to the National Knowledge Commission member Jayathi Ghosh, there is a need to re-orient official strategies for ensuring better access of Muslim children to schooling outside the madrasas which cater to only four per cent of children from the community.
Discrimination in Media
Hindu upper caste men, who constitute just eight per cent of the total population of India, hold over 70 % of the key posts across newsrooms in the country. The so-called twice-born Hindu castes dominate 85 % key posts despite constituting just 16 % of the total population, while the intermediary castes represent a meager 3%.
The Hindu Other Backward Class groups, who are 34 % of the total population, have a share of just 4% in the Indian newsrooms. Muslims, who constitute about 13 % of the population, control just 4 % top posts while Christians and Sikhs have a slightly better representation. But the worst scenario emerges in the case of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes /Aborgines (STs): Based on CSDS study, 2006. Ref: The Hindu, June 05, 2006
Discrimination in Judiciary
Indias subordinate courts have a backlog of over 22 million cases while the 21 high courts and the Supreme Court have 3.5 million and 32,000 pending cases (2006). In subordinate courts, over 15 million cases are filed and an equal number disposed of annually by about 14,000 judges! Every year a million or more cases are added to the arrears. At the current speed, the lower courts may take 124 years for clearing the backlog. There were only 13 judges for every million people.
Recently a parliamentary committee blamed the judiciary for keeping out competent persons of downtrodden communities from through a shrewd process of manipulation. Between 1950 to 2000, 47% of Chief Justices and 40% of Judges were of Brahmin origin!. Dalits and Indian aborigines are lesser than 20 out of 610 judges working in Supreme Court and state high Courts. This nexus and manipulative judicial appointments have to be broken, it urged. [Parliamentary standing committee report on Constitutional Review, Sudarshan Nachiappan]. Among 12 states with high-Muslim population, Muslim representation in judicial sector is limited to 7.8%. (Justice Sachar Report).
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, only 31 per cent criminal trials are completed in less than a year. Some take even more than 10 years. According to its study, Crime in India 2002, nearly 220,000 cases took more than 3 years to reach court, and about 25,600 exhausted 10 years before they were completed. The term of the Liberhan Commission, formed 14 years ago to probe the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya and originally given a mandate of three months, has been extended again!
Discrimination against Children
According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, India has the highest number of street children in the world. There are no exact numbers, but conservative estimates suggest that about 18 million children live and labor in the streets of Indias urban centers. Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta each have an estimated street-children population of over 100,000. The total number of Child labor in India is estimated to be 60 million.
The level of child malnutrition in India is among the highest in the world, higher even than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, says the report Extent of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition in India by the UNs special rapporteur on the right to food. While around 25 percent children globally were underweight, in India the number was 43 percent. A quarter of all neo-natal deaths in the world, (2.1 million) occurred in India, says UNICEF Report 2007 . More than one in five children who die within four weeks of birth is an Indian. Nearly fifty percent of Indian children who die before the age of five do not survive beyond the first 28 days.
Discrimination against Women
According to the 2001 census, female literacy in India is 54.16 % against male literacy of 75.85 %. Most of the working women remain outside the organized sector: A mere 2.3 % women are administrators and managers, and 20.5 % professional and technical workers.
There are an estimated 40 million Hindu widows in India, the least fortunate of them shunned and stripped of the life they lived when they were married. Its believed that 15,000 widows live on the streets of Vrindavan, a Hindu holy city of about 55,000 population in northern India. Many widows at least 40per cent are said to be under 50 are dumped by their relatives in religious towns and left to live off charity or beg on the streets. Their plight was highlighted in Deepa Mehtas award-winning film Water, which had to be shot mainly outside India because of Hindu extremist opposition to the production.
Nearly 9 out of 10 pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from malnutrition and about half of all children (47%) under-five suffer from underweight and 21 % of the populations are undernourished. India alone has more undernourished people (204 million) than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined. Nearly 20 % of women dying in childbirth around the globe are Indians. Six out of every 10 births take place at home and untrained people attend more than half of them. 44 % of the Indian girls were married before they reached the age of 18. It added, 16 % of girls in the age group 15-19 years were already mothers or expecting their first child and that pregnancy is the leading cause of mortality in this age group.
On an average one Indian woman commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute. During Indian marriage, women should bring jewellery, cash and even consumer durables as part of dowry to the in-laws. If they fail, the victims are burnt to death they are doused in kerosene and set fire to. Routinely the in-laws claim that the death happened simply due to an accident.
Rape is the fastest growing crime in India. Every hour Indian women face two rapes, two kidnappings, four molestations and seven incidents of cruelty from husbands and relatives [National Crime Records Bureau Report 2006]
Fetus Killing
Women to men ratio were feared to reach 20:80 by the year 2020 as female fetus killing is rampant. Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, told Indian Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury to Reuters. According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys. The availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests leads to such mass killings in India.
Around 11 million abortions are carried out in India every year and nearly 80,000 women die during the process, says a report from Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI)
A Zillion reasons to escape from India
Haq's Musings: Are India and Pakistan Failed States?
